Three authors, Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, have filed a class-action lawsuit against Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company, for alleged copyright infringement. The authors claim that Anthropic used their books and numerous others without permission to train its AI chatbot Claude, which generates text responses to user prompts.
According to the lawsuit filed in California federal court, Anthropic utilized pirated versions of the authors’ works and a vast array of other copyrighted materials to teach Claude how to interact with humans. The complaint accuses Anthropic of profiting from the unauthorized use of creative content and undermining the intellectual property rights of copyright holders.
This legal action is part of a broader trend in which copyright owners are challenging tech companies over the appropriation of their works for training AI systems. Similar lawsuits have been brought against other major players in the tech industry, such as OpenAI and Meta Platforms, for allegedly misusing copyrighted material to develop their AI models.
Last year, Anthropic faced a lawsuit from music publishers regarding the unauthorized use of song lyrics to train Claude. The company has received significant financial backing from major corporations like Amazon and Google, as well as prominent individuals in the tech and finance sectors.
The authors behind the current lawsuit are seeking monetary damages and a permanent injunction against Anthropic to prevent further misuse of their works. They allege that Anthropic has built a lucrative business by unlawfully appropriating hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books for its AI training dataset.
As the legal battle unfolds, it highlights the complex ethical and legal issues surrounding the use of copyrighted material in AI development. The outcome of this case could have far-reaching implications for the tech industry’s practices and the protection of intellectual property rights in the digital age.
